This year, The Writing Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts welcomed three new faculty members: Deborah Eisenberg, Richard Ford and Phillip Lopate.
Richard Ford was appointed this fall as the Emmanuel Roman and Barrie Sardoff Roman Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Writing. Ford's novel Independence Day (1995), was the first book to receive both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His other works include A Piece of My Heart (1976), The Ultimate Good Luck (1981), The Sportswriter (1986), Rock Springs (1987), Wildlife (1990) and Women with Men (1998). Ford was given the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1995 for his outstanding contributions to the form. “It’s an honor and a happy opportunity to be associated with Columbia,” said Ford, “and especially with the Writing Program, which has such a distinguished history.” He will join the Writing faculty in Fall 2012.
Deborah Eisenberg is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous honors including the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writer’s Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Eisenberg has published four collections of stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997), and Twilight of the Superheroes (2006). Her first two story collections were republished in one volume as The Work (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg (1997). All four volumes were reprinted in 2010 in The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (2010). She joins Columbia University School of the Arts from the University of Virginia, where she has taught since 1994.
Professor Phillip Lopate has been named the Director of Columbia’s MFA concentration in Creative Nonfiction. Lopate will assume the role from Professor Richard Locke. In the past several decades, Phillip Lopate has been a driving force behind the resurgence of creative nonfiction and memoir. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts grant. He has written three personal essay collections—Bachelorhood (1981), Against Joie de Vivre (1989) and Portrait of My Body (1996); two novels, Confessions of Summer (1979) and The Rug Merchant (1987); two poetry collections, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open (1972) and The Daily Round (1976); a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children (1975); a collection of his movie criticism, Totally Tenderly Tragically (1998); an urbanist meditation, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (2004); and a biographical monograph, Rudy Burckhardt: Photographer and Filmmaker (2004).
